The Dark Knight Returns continues its turn in the blogosphere spotlight. Here’s Dave Intermittent arguing that in DKR (and in the Sin City books), Frank Miller boils his characters down to their essence and then blows that essence up to gigantic proportions. (Sounds about right; and it’s always nice to find another unabashed Miller fan.)

And here’s Steven Berg (again), talking about how only those characters who refuse to judge Batman are allowed to judge Batman, and how Batman’s rogues gallery serve as catalysts for narrative crises in the novel. I’d like to see him flesh these ideas out a bit more (what are the differences between the crises that Two-Face, the Mutant Leader, the Joker, and Superman engender?), but I’m intrigued thus far.

Why have so many people who might reasonably have been expected to support President Bush in the next election suddenly wavered, and even turned against him altogether?

Partially, this is because the Democrats have rejected their rejectionists and selected John Kerry as Bush’s opponent. Kerry, whatever his faults, gives the appearance of being a candidate you can take seriously on national security and foreign policy issues (Bush’s big strong points), which is more than you could say for Howard Dean. (Whether or not Kerry actually can be taken seriously may well be a whole ‘nother story, but still.) Another factor is the relentless “where are the WMDs?” questioning, which of course ignores the forest for the trees, but still (rightly) puts a big chink in the President’s foreign-policy armor.

But the real culprit, I think, was the disastrous State of the Union address. The amazing thing about the upcoming election is that I think it would have been relatively easy for Bush to actually secure the vote of myself and others like me, and he blew it in a big way. The SOTU was a tipping point for liberal hawks–the point at which we realized that for all our hawkishness, we’re still liberals, and the President is not. Ditto for libertarian hawks. Ditto for fiscally conservative hawks. The SOTU essentially caused a lot of Bush’s ersatz supporters to pit one aspect of their political personality against the other, which was the LAST thing he should have wanted to do with it. Because the fact is, we’ve all spent a lifetime being the first half of our respective “_____ hawk” equations, and for the most part have only been the second half since Sept. 11, 2001. The first half has a big advantage in that regard.

But does the second half outweigh everything else? That’s the question that a lot of people are asking themselves right now.

I realize we’re all incredibly busy pursuing the important issues–for example, the shocking news that a certain National Guardsman may not have been so enthusiastic during his Vietnam-era term of service–but I thought I might want to take a moment and point out this whole pesky nuclear proliferation thing.

You see, when we invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein–which of course we shouldn’t have done; after all, there are a lot of “bad guys” in the world, and where are the weapons?–we convinced Moammar Gaddafi that pursuing nuclear weapons wasn’t in his best interest. So he announced to the world he had been doing so and invited us to inspect the dismantling of his programs. Which led us to discover that Pakistan had been conducting a nuclear arms bazaar for several years now. They sold nuclear technology and plans to Libya, North Korea, and Iran, and attempted to do so with Iraq (whaddya know!), Syria, and probably other countries. Companies from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, South Africa, Japan, Germany, and Italy were involved at one stage or another. Pakistani President Musharraf has denied that any terrorist groups were similarly approached or involved, even while he pardoned Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who did all the peddling. Reports suggest that U.S. forces have secretly secured all Pakistani nuclear technology and sites–that is, the ones that are still in Pakistan.

Anyway, I know it’s really, really important to make fun of the blundering neocons, and to hold the administration personally responsible for believing the outlandish notion that maybe Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, so carry on with that, but I thought the fact that an international nuclear-weapon proliferation conspiracy has been discovered because of our intervention in Iraq might bear mentioning.

I know, I know. Where are my priorities?

Look out, ol’ Johnny is back! Johnny Bacardi has declared an end to his self-imposed exile from the blogosphere and returns to form with a series of posts on the Justin-Janet fiasco, the Beatles, some movies he’s seen recently, and oh yeah, comics galore. Start at the link above and scroll up. Welcome back, Johnny–you’re one of my favorites!

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Brown conquers the comics blogosphere! (I’m fond of exclamation points today!) His self-parody minicomic Be a Man gets rave reviews from Bill Sherman, Big Sunny D, and even J.B. neophyte Dirk Deppey. Having had more than my fill of minimalist autobio cartoonists, it took me a good long time to give Brown’s work a shot. But boy, was I ever glad I finally did. Brown comes across as a sensitive artist type who’ll be the best boyfriend ever if you let him–but, get this, he actually seems genuine! It’s not just a pose he’s adopted to pull birds, which is the sense I get from other cartoonists working in this genre. Moreover, he doesn’t have that cloying, cutesy self-involvement that mars the work of some of his compatriots. Though I haven’t yet read the book, I imagine that Be a Man, like his other gag-strip minis, is evidence of that. Brown enthusiastically mocks his own sad-sack schtick, something that those who take their Sensitive Artiste personae way too seriously are unable to do.

(I also think that the enthusiasm with which Be a Man has been greeted should serve as an example to altcomix publishers that yes, it is worth releasing your Serious Artists’ goofy stuff. Fantagraphics in particular may want to rethink their publishing strategy for not-so-funny-animal artist Jason, whose hilarious gag comics may offset the tragedy fatigue his serious comics might engender in their readers….)

Speaking of hilarious, check out David Fiore‘s simulated interview with Craig Thompson. Hysterical, Dave, but shouldn’t you have thrown the word “antinomian” in there somewhere?

And speaking of Fiore, Eve Tushnet cops to a DFCR (David Fiore Comprehension Rate) of about 50%. She also links to more Watchmenblogging, this time a piece focusing on the formal rigorousness of the novel, by Commonplace Book.

Kevin Melrose reports (courtesy of subscription site Variety) that X-Men director Bryan Singer will be co-writing Ultimate X-Men at some point soon. I’m glad. Singer is good people, and my experience with him and other people on the X-film production team has me convinced that they really do care about the characters and the concept. They ought to be a good fit with Ultimate, the most high-octane of the X-books.

Finally, I just want to say that my handy new copy of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s newsletter, Busted! (the Fall 2003 issue, out just in time for Valetine’s Day), has all sorts of valuable information on the fight for the First Amendment. The Child Online Protection Act, the Jesus Castillo case, Tony Twist v. Todd McFarlane, Fox News v. Al Franken, the Winters Brothers v. DC Comics, John Ashcroft v. fucking–it’s all there. Wait. What’s that you say? You’re not already a member? Well, why not?

(They publish a list of members, you know. So I know which of you aren’t on there. Punks.)

(or: Light of my life, clogger of my inbox.)

Today I got spam from one “Dolores Hays.” Okay, so they misspelled the last name, but still, what is up with all this literary-themed junk email lately?

On both Imus this morning and his own show this evening, I listened to Chris Matthews hold forth on how The American People want an actual soldier for a wartime president.

In other news, I am currently reading about four-term president and wheelchair jockey Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who I believe may have won a couple of re-elections during a large conflict of some kind.

David Fiore (official “Man of the Hour” here at ADDTF) really liked my interview with Craig Thompson, to the point where he’s now interested in picking up Thompson’s book Blankets. Both of these reactions make me very happy. So I feel I owe it to Dave to clarify my thoughts on serialization in general and the mooted serialization of Blankets in particular. David said

My only quibble with the interview Sean–I know you agree with Craig that “self-contained” is usually better than seriality (endless or otherwise), but it would have been interesting to see how the man would’ve responded to a little devil’s advocacy on that issue!

I think what Dave’s got in mind here is my reaction to his claim that the best art works like ongoing Big Two superhero titles–as I put it then, “never-ending, closure-free, static characters, obsessively concerned with minute variations on a very limited number of themes, and without an author to speak of.” It seemed to me then, and still does now, that asserting that such works are superior to traditional (or, really, even most non-traditional) narratives relies on a good many faulty premises and leads inevitably to a faulty conclusion. But what I was talking about in my interview with Thompson was, quite simply, specific to Thompson’s work on Blankets.

Thompson told me that many of his fellow cartoonists advised him to release this 570-page work in multiple installments. Having read such smaller chunks of the book in the various online previews that had been made available in the run-up to the book’s release and being extremely underwhelmed by them, I felt that this would have been a disastrous strategy. Not because of any inherent problem with serialization–as long as there’s a completed structure to be arrived at somewhere, I don’t really care how you publish a given work, most of the time; my famous problems with “floppies” stem mainly from logistical and public-image concerns, not from a belief that the serialization of a graphic novel is Always Bad. No, I felt this way because of a problem with the material–i.e. it simply read much better as a whole than as discreet subsections. Individual passages that at first seemed twee or self-involved subsequently blossomed, when taken in all together, into a compelling narrative of the loss of a young man’s ability to idealize. When I cited Dave Cooper’s Ripple to support my argument, again, my problem wasn’t with serialization per se, but with how serializing his book led to unfulfillable audience expectations and undermined a narrative strategy that would have worked well had the book been presented in its complete form all at once.

In the end this, like so many other questions of sequential-art aesthetics and mechanics, falls under Collins’s Law. Question: Do serialized comics suck? Answer: Not the ones where the serialization works!

David Fiore finishes up his Watchmen blogging in the ridiculously high style to which we have become accustomed:

I prefer to think of Rorschach as Peter Parker, frozen in one of those lonely tableaux that conclude many of the Ditko ASM’s[…] imagine if no new “surprises” awaited that character, just an endless stroll through that same moody panel… that’s Rorschach!

and

The Nite Owl/Silk Spectre aspect of this book is an “empowerment fantasy” (and I’m really not a fan of those), but the point is that it’s a good empowerment fantasy–Moore is saying: “look, these people are doing wonderful things for their community and they’re gonna fuck each other as soon as they’re done. They aren’t even gonna wait for the owl-plane to land.”[…]Dan and Laurie just get off on “making a difference”, and this is made crystal clear in the wonderful bk 7 fire-rescue, which actually does give us something like that “lost innocence of the silver age” that we hear tell of…

Wow. I really can’t begin to describe how impressed I am with David’s work on this book over the last week or so. Every day he showed something about these characters that was completely unexpected, yet there all along, if we’d known where (or how) to look. Kudos, David! (BTW, David has now begun blogging Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. I haven’t read the series, so I’ll probably stay away for fear of spoilers, but if you’re familiar with it, my guess is this series of posts will be a goldmine for you.)

But just when you thought it was safe to go on the Internet without reading involved and fascinating analyses of seminal superhero graphic novels from the 1980s, Steven Berg at Peiratikos has started blogging the other side of the coin, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns! His first post, besides providing a terrific one-stop shopping list of all the Watchmenblogging done since Eve Tushnet started it all a few weeks ago, focuses on politics and psychology, and the impotence of both against Batman. The gist, I think, is that by the end of the book Batman has been freed from both–his secret identity “dead,” his superhero-warrior persona completely dominant, the outside world no longer has any hold over him whatsoever–he is at long last no longer conflicted but “at peace with himself.” (Interesting, then, that so many pointed to the lack of character reversals in The Dark Knight Strikes Again as a fault of that sequel, when it really is perfectly in line with the trajectory established in DKR. By the end of DKR Batman is freed from all external concerns–why should he be conflicted anymore?) Steven pays particular attention to the way that Batman’s detractors asssume Batman is completely accountable for his own actions, while utilizing pop psychology to explain and excuse the actions of even his most murderous enemies:

Dr. Bartholomew Wolper gives us Batman as

Can someone please tell these penguins that when they made the choice to become homosexuals, they helped to undermine the sacred committed relationships between men penguins and women penguins that have been a cornerstone of penguin civilization for centuries?

I just wish the headline had run “Gay Penguins Make Homophobes Look Even Stupider Than Usual.”

I don’t handle stressing out my cat very well. When we first brought her home from the shelter she brought a nasty case of both the sniffles and conjunctivitis home with her, and when we had to grab her and stick her in the closet so we’d have easy access to her when applying her medicine in the future, she ran all around the apartment letting out the most pathetic yowl. Remember how Luke Skywalker sounded after Darth Vader cut his hand off and then told him he was his father? She sounded like that. So as my wife and father-in-law continued to give chase, I screamed “YOU’RE KILLING HER!” Yes, I am still embarrassed, and thanks for asking. I try to fob it off by saying that I was paraphrasing Walter Sobczak from Lebowksi–“You’re killing your father, Larry”–but no one ever believes me.

Anyway, today I had to bring miss Lucy to the vet to get her claws trimmed. It’s easier to bring her there and have them do it than for us to try and do it ourselves at this point–she really hates being held, so rather than have her squirm and scratch and probably get injured while we try to do it, we let the pros handle it, and they’ve said she’s super well-behaved during the process so we don’t even feel all that bad about it. Well, today was the first time I had to rustle her up and stick her in the carry crate by myself, and I felt like an abusive father. Once she caught on to what was happening, she started with that heartbreaking “raaooohhhhwwww” again. Oh Lord, I don’t have the stomach for that! And when I finally got ahold of her, she just held onto the sheets of our bed for dear life (easy to do for her, considering her claws needed clipping), then sort of gave up and went limp. Poor baby.

The story has a happy ending, at least–the trimming itself took no time at all, and the vet tech said (once again) that Lucy was so good, so pretty, and so soft. That’s my girl!

(Hey, the Missus isn’t the only one who can write about our cat!)

Big announcement for ADDTF today–my brand-new RSS feed is up and running! I don’t have an RSS reader myself, but I’m supposed to give you high-tech types this link, and I guess you can do the rest. (The link is now in the blogroll over to your left, too.)

Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat: Now in syndication!

I just got a spam message with the subject heading “Use HGH to lose weight while you sleep . .. .. mhucyqhish468353959951423”. Okay, fine, nothing unusual there. But the sender? “Saruman 1726.”

If Saruman actually existed in 21st-century America, do you have any doubt he’d be spamming like there was no tomorrow?

Welcome back to what I hope will be an ongoing series of interviews with great cartoonists here at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat. Once again I have the privilege of being able to publish an interview with a gifted writer/artist for the first time anywhere: This time around, the subject is Craig Thompson. As was the case with my interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, this piece was originally intended for publication (after much editing for space) in the now-defunct Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly. It was conducted on July 18, 2003, over lunch at the San Diego Comic-Con.

My introduction to Craig

Four topic roundup.

First things first: The second installment in the ADDTF Interview series has been posted! This time around, I’m happy to offer my conversation with Blankets creator Craig Thompson.

To celebrate, I’ve also reformatted my Phoebe Gloeckner interview to make it a whole lot more readable. If it hurt your head to read it the first time around, give it a shot now. After you finish the Thompson one, that is.

David Fiore is still watching the Watchmen more effectively than, well, anyone this side of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons themselves, I think. Today’s near-comically insightful quote stems from David’s comparison of the work of Jack Kirby (morality constructed through action upon the outside world) to Steve Ditko (morality constructed through, if I’m getting this right, the choice to continue existing in one’s own space and on one’s own terms):

one of the reasons I’m down on the series (as an influence upon the tradition) is the fact that Moore bascially expels the Ditko elements (Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach) from the field, leaving the Kirby elements in the ascendant. I haven’t said much in this space about Nite-Owl and the Silk Spectre, but clearly, they’re very important to the design of the series. They’re likeable characters and they serve as stand-ins for the reader (Moore’s idea of the superhero reader–who enjoys the genre primarily as a power/escape fantasy). Neither Dan nor Laurie is able to function very well in the “real world”, and both seem to view adventuring as a “radical choice” (i.e. if you embrace it, it becomes your life–and, really, why wouldn’t you, if your real lives are as vapid as theirs seem to be)… They can’t even have sex unless they go through a good deal of costume-clad foreplay, and, you know, that’s just not too healthy!

Damn, he’s good. Please, go read the whole thing!

In a funny little bit of synchronicity (are the angels warring in Heaven as we speak?), Jim Henley revises his harsh criticism of Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier on the very same day that I finally read the book. I’m glad Jim retracted some of his condemnation of Cooke’s depiction of erstaz pacifist-cum-ace pilot Hal Jordan. It seemed to me that the story framed this issue so that it was clear the military brass was not aware of Hal’s demurral to kill until after the Korean War had ended. I think it’s conceivable (more so given the flexibility we customarily accord to the “reality” of morality plays, as this superhero comic surely is)that Hal hid his pseudo-pacifism throughout his training, and that by the time it became obvious to his fellow pilots, he’d so won them over with both his personality and his skill as a flyer that they helped cover it up. It appeared to me that the brass began their investigation into Jordan and his refusal to kill only after the harrowing post-armistice incident depicted in the comic made doing so necessary from a diplomatic standpoint. Moreover, I don’t think Jordan was being lionized for this position: It’s clear that his actions, though “moral” on the surface, were simply a dodge that forced his brother airmen to make the difficult decisions he himself couldn’t handle.

Much of this appears to be borne out by Darwyn Cooke himself on DC’s message board. (I don’t know if the link will get you to the right posts, because DC has a bass-ackwards board that puts the oldest post at the end of the thread; just go to the bottom of the last page.) Cooke’s moral equivalency about the Korean War is troubling given the well-known nature of the North Korean Communist regime, and to the extent which this influenced his storytelling, it’s right to criticize his depiction of Hal Jordan. (Certainly the suggestion that the average American, let alone ace pilots, were indifferent to the Red Menace in the 1950s is a bit of a stretch. And if refusing to stand against North Korea makes you “a forward thinker,” as Cooke suggests, let us hope that the future has passed us by.) (UPDATE: Wait a second–An email exchange with the illustrious Jim Henley reminds me that the Korean War was unpopular (duh). Not Vietnam-unpopular, which is sort of what I was talking about, but unpopular. So it’s certainly fine to have characters wonder what the hell the point of it was. It’s just a little less fine for Cooke himself wonder that, as he apparently does if his messboard comments are any indication. That’s all’s I’m sayin’.) But most of what Cooke says makes sense for the character, the situation, and the story. Long story short: I gun for lousy storytelling in the guise of moralism with all the gusto of that helicopter in Atlantic City in The Godfather Part III, but I don’t see it here. (And the art is top-drawer.)

Finally, the battle between the Comics Blogosphere’s Preeminent Curmudgeons continues. Yesterday, NeilAlien responded to criticism levelled at him by Dirk Deppey by saying “that’s not what I said”; today Dirk responds by saying “Yes it was.”

No, it wasn’t. I think this is all a misunderstanding based on the following sentence: “Markets for non-superhero comics need to be rebuilt from outside the happy and fully-serviced superhero comic market.”

Dirk has taken this sentence (written by NeilAlien here) to mean that Neil feels the Direct Market is getting along fine as a superhero-only vendor, thankyouverymuch, and that efforts to change this are a waste of time. This is how Dirk responds (partially to assert that he’s not attributing maliciousness to Neil’s position):

[T]he attitude represented in [Neil’s] quote would eventually lead to the downfall of the Direct Market, but I don’t think Neil holds it becuase he wants to see retailers on the unemployment line. I just don’t think he’d thought things through when he wrote the statement quoted above….I believe that the “happy and fully-serviced superhero comic market,” which to the best of my (admittedly limited) ability to estimate is roughly 70-80% of the Direct Market, is headed for a slow but steady decline, for reasons enumerated in the disputed interview.

But Neil isn’t disputing that–in fact, putting it that way helps make his case! And his case is that browbeating superhero fans for not buying non-superhero comics is not a recipe for the successful salvation of the Direct Market. This is doubly true if those superhero fans are dying off! What Neil has advocated, consistently, is that the D.M. scratch that, the industry at large should forget about trying to convert this dwindling Superman audience to Jimmy Corrigan and Queen & Country and Iron Wok Jan, and instead focus on outreach efforts directed at people who aren’t part of the Direct Market at all! Manga fans (young and old, female and male), people who buy altcomix and non-fiction graphic novels when the New York Times or the Guardian reviews them, goths at Hot Topic or Tower Recrods, genre-fiction fans picking up stuff for the beach or the airplane or the commute–these are the avenues of expansion for the Direct Market and the larger industry, NeilAlien argues, and not superhero fans, who are already DM customers, and who have never shown any signs of willingness to buy non-superhero stuff. This is understandable, Neil says: After all, this is their micro-hobby. Using the analogy of henpecking at stamp collectors to collect coins as well, Neil asks, why should we even expect superhero collectors to change now, let alone ever?

Dirk, on the other hand, has made his opinion on this matter quite clear: The plight of the Direct Market is in large part the fault of the superhero fanboy. (For the record, you can find my take on the matter here, starting at the fifth paragraph.)

Dirk, Neil: You both recognize the dire straits the industry finds itself in. You both advocate the need for the Direct Market to grow into new audiences. Your only difference of opinion, it seems to me, is whether the industry should, in addition to wooing those new audiences, hold superhero fans accountable for their role in creating a mono-genre marketplace–indeed, often reacting angrily against the very introduction of alternatives into that marketplace–and exhort them to change in order for that marketplace to surive; or view them as reliable customers whose needs are being met, and therefore ignore them and spend prosetylization, marketing, and outreach efforts elsewhere, where the profit margin is potentially exponentially greater. That’s a reasonable difference of opinion, right? It’s also one that’s relatively easy to grasp, right?

Now, put aside your differences and work together for truth, justice, and the American Way, just like Batman and Superman!

I’ve already made my opinion on the Janet-Justin Halftime Boobtacular clear: The problem is not the nudity (which in itself is hardly worse than the Coors Light commercials that run about a bajillion times per football game, or than the cheerleaders the NFL parades around, or the boobs-for-food bartering on the Tiffany Network’s Survivor a season or two back), but the simulated non-consensual sex act that caused the nudity in the first place. In that regard the fiasco is at least as much Justin Timberlake’s doing as Janet Jackson’s.

So why doesn’t it surprise me at all that in this memo from “the bipartisan [Congressional] Sex and Violence in the Media Caucus” (oh, it’s bipartisan! I guess that means the First Amendment says it’s okay for these elected officials to begin spending our money to investigate fake gunfights and blowjobs on TV!) that the Congressmorons in question describe the unfortunate event thusly:

Viewers watched as the star of the show, performer Janet Jackson, had her costume ripped away to reveal her bare breast. Her on-camera sexual gyrations and exposure were broadcast by CBS via 200 free, over-the-air television stations around the country.

Note the awkward use of the passive voice in order to place the blame squarely on Janet, and not her male counterpart (who I imagine is a bigger star than she is these days, saleswise). Note that mere “sexual gyrations” are viewed as just as bad as actual nudity. Note that the violent and misogynistic overtones of the act are not even mentioned.

Listen: We all like breasts. And nipples. The obviously fake breasts of a plastic-surgeried freakshow, complete with ninja throwing star ornamentation–well, these we’re not so sure about. Generally, however, I’d just as soon see the American TV industry go European, where nudity has been shown on broadcast for decades (I’ve got the Monty Python DVDs to prove it.) Of course, the Super Bowl, despite the best efforts of the NFL and its sponsors, is family programming, and not the appropriate venue for this sort of thing, but ultimately a split-second nip slip should not be the stuff of federal investigations.

What is disturbing is that the forcibly enforced second-class sexual citizen status of women is so ingrained into our culture that not even self-appointed First-Amendment violating bluenoses don’t even think to comment upon it. They’ve missed the point, and over on the other side of the argument, everyone saying “hey, no big deal” is missing the point as well.

Amy wrote a poem about our cat Lucy. It’s awesome.

David Fiore continues his immensely interesting Watchmenblogging with an analysis of Rorschach. “[A]t a certain point, Kovacs the man became indistinguishable from his moral judgements of the world”–naturally, sez Dave, this would eventually put him at odds with Dr. Manhattan, who refuses to pass judgement on anything. I’d never thought of the contrast between the two characters in those terms before.

I’d also never thought of Spider-Man/Peter Parker the way Dave breaks it down in that same post:

When we first meet him he’s an ostracized nerd–a nonentity. In more realistic fiction, this type of character only has two options open to him: either he continues to endure social oppression, or he becomes a “somebody” by “standing up for himself”, thus altering the power dynamic in his community. In the actual event–he does neither, thanks to the spider bite. Throughout Ditko’s run, at least, Parker remains the same bookish nerd he’s always been….Web-swinging is more like meditation, or an exorcism–it’s not Peter’s “true self” unleashed.

I think Dave’s hitting upon a unique feature of fantastic fiction–the fantasy, or the spectacle if you prefer, can be used formally to stand in for, transform, or replace traditional/realist psychological motivations and development. Why this unique and liberatory aspect is seen by anti-genre snobs as a bug and not a feature is something I’ll never understand! (However, I wonder if Spider-Man’s creative team–if not Lee & Ditko, then certainly some of their successors–see things quite this way. Watching the film, for example, do you not think we’re meant to believe that Spider-Man is Peter Parker’s true self, or at least the “true self” he wants to have? Spider-Man is clever, physically fit, creative, brave, a babe magnet, a protector of the innocent, and a seeker of justice. It’s worth noting that over the years (witness the current J. Michael Straczynski Amazing Spider-Man, for example), Peter Parker himself has become all these things as well….

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m really happy about Alan David Doane’s new series of five-question interviews–and clearly I’m not the only one. When I lamented the lack of high-quality interviews a while back, this was the type of antidote I had in mind.

But one person wasn’t so thrilled with yesterday’s interview with Journalista weblogger Dirk Deppey: comics blogosphere godfather NeilAlien. Neil feels–and rightly so, I think–that Dirk woefully mischaracterized the ‘Alien’s opinion on superhero hegemony in the Direct Market. Here’s his response, laying out his case to the contrary. In fairness to Dirk, I don’t think he was “maliciously mischaracterizing” Neil, but he did get Neil’s opinion wrong by almost 180 degrees.

Whoa. Now this is what I call high praise.

Well, it is a really good movie.

(Link courtesy of the awesome OneRing.net.)

Mickey Kaus nails the real problem with the Justin-Janet faux controversy: “It’s the feigned sexual assault, stupid!”

The issue isn’t nudity but the implicit endorsement of–searching for the right words here–acting out male fantasies of violent and invasive non-consensual sexual behavior.

(Emphasis Kaus’s.) In many ways this is of a piece with MTV’s other recent manufactured shock moments, the Tatu teen-girl underwear make-out party at the 2003 Movie Awards and the Britney-Madonna-Christina three-way at the 2003 VMAs. Both these phony lesbian displays and Justin’s stripping of Janet’s clothes (invariably and inexplicably referred to by the media as “Janet’s stunt”) involve women tortuously convoluting their sexuality in order to please the male audience. In all cases MTV’s plan was to feed the events into their endless hype autofellatio machine: running the clips on MTV News, showing the clips to guests on TRL, repackaging the clips into the invariable “MTV’s Most Shocking Moments” specials, and so forth, until they become an indelible part of the network’s identity. (Perhaps the most egregious example of this phenomenon is how MTV and VH1 run specials touting the breaking of racial boundaries in the early ’80s by Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video–despite the fact that these very channels erected those very boundaries!)

The good thing about the controversy is that it involves CBS, which probably means Mel Karmazin is going to be directly involved with the in-house response. Hopefully the people at MTV who should have lost their jobs for this calculated, self-indulgent, misogynist horseshit long ago will finally get their comeuppance.